Aigronne Valley Wildlife pages

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

"The Night Visitors"

The weather is warming...
slowly...v..e...r....y....slowly.
Too slowly for things "potager"-wise....

But it is bringing out the moths...
and Monday night we had two lovely visitors...
firstly a few pictures of the Giant Peacock Moth [Saturnia pyri] Grand-Paon-de-nuit.
We had them around, around this time last year, so keep your eyes open local folks... or those further south... as Susan pointed out to me last year, these are really on the Northerly edge of their range...

The cat can't believe it!!
Another one, just like last year...
she then asked to go outside...
but, on sniffing the air, decided not!!

Most definitely a male... just look at those "comb-like" antennae... but, read on...

Normally it is the male that has the feathery antennae to detect the female's pheromones... but as "he" was still here this morning... and warming up too fast in the morning sunlight [yes... sunlight, folks]... I moved it into a more shaded position... and noticed that "she" had the big, rounded, bulbous body of a female... so, she-he... I'm now not sure...

A cuddly moth?

Or just plain strokeable???

Or... is it an alien??

It is trying to get in!!!

Hope it hasn't got a glasscutter!!!!

The other visitor was equally striking....
a Cream-spot Tiger [Arctia villica/ Epicallia villica] Écaille villageoise
We get five different species of Tiger here... Garden, Jersey, Scarlet and Ruby being the other four.
But the Scarlet is the rarest and the Cream-spot follows close behind... this is only the third "known" visit.

Posing with a sloughed snakeskin... but keeping well out of the way of the Black & White moth-muncher anyway!!

Here the striking orange hindwings are being flashed...

... and now the bright scarlet body... these colours are to warn predators that...
"I don't really taste very nice... so go and eat something else... please!!"

I managed to catch this one and get it outside... but it came back to the window...

How's this for a striking colour display?!

and yesterday morning it was still on the front step so I managed to get a few shots of it without using the flash...

Handsome from the side isn't he...

But I'm not sure what he can hide on wearing this jacket!!

He was right where a foot was likely to smear him all over the front step, so I carefully moved him to the ground at the side and managed this final shot into the bargain!

Camouflaged? I think not... perhaps that is why the warning colours are so striking??

6 comments:

Tim: The coloration is 1. I taste nasty (red and black) and 2. I'm aggressive (black and white). These moths have both night and day defenses, of a quite different nature. They can ping sonar at bats causing the bats to be unable to read their own echo location, disorienting them and making them miss the target.

Spotted on the Web

We collect links to interesting Natural History & Environmental stories that we spot on the Interweb...this is where we draw your attention to them...[and there is an archive page of the same name... where you can also leave comments]

"In the past few years there has been a "wild food" boom with celebrity chefs heading for the great outdoors in search of fresh ingredients. So, how practical is it to live solely on wild food? And does spurning the supermarket, as some critics have claimed, make you just a bit annoying?"

Wildlife in the Aigronne and Touraine du Sud

Based at our house near Le Grand Pressigny, we are centrally placed between The Brenne & The Loire Anjou Touraine National Parks and the Sologne, enabling us to observe wild events and discover new [to us] insects, plants and birds.

We started this record in 2003, when we bought La Forge and from time to time we will be publishing the odd species list of what we've seen here at La Forge and in the immediate vicinity.

We've also been building a collection of finds, mainly from prehistory... we record those as well on the blog Touraine Flint.As well as pictures on this site, we've been posting to flickr.

Guided Tours in a lovely limo!

Susan&Simon from Days on the Claise have another blog, Loire Valley Nature, which is "designed to be used as an English language natural history web resource for lowland central France." .

Please note:

The early listings were only a few observations with an entry and usually no record of numbers!They had been taken directly from our 'birders notebook'Where there are further details from the book we keep at the house, they will be added later.